Tracking Your
Internet Customers

Do you understand who your Internet visitors are? If you don't, then you really don't know the quality of your traffic. And, if you're not getting the quality you need, then your sales, leads, etc., aren't where they should be.

Website traffic analysis may be the single most important key to getting better results from your web site. The main problem is very few companies actually review or know how to interpret their Internet traffic results. Understanding the traffic at your web site and making change are critical to getting profitable results from your corporate mortgage web site.

Focus on the goals for your site and analyze the number of qualified visitors you get by analyzing your traffic results. Here are some tips to help.

Boost Web Site Results

Develop quantifiable goals for your site, such as numbers of online sales, qualified leads, 1-800 inquires, etc. Your log files are the key to understanding the number of unique visitors, how they use your site, and results. Tracking your visitors in terms of how long they stay at your site, how they move around, and whether they do what you want at your site is the key to fine tuning your site to make it generate the results you want.

Most traffic tracking programs are located on your hosting company servers
(WebTrends.com is the most used, but there are many other good programs). The top hosting providers provide this traffic information at no additional cost per month. The low-cost hosting providers do not provide this traffic service. And just like everything in life…you get what you pay for.

Check carefully the written content of our most popular web pages and the less popular pages. What do these popular pages have in common, if anything? What do the less popular pages have in common? Is there a content problem or a navigation problem? Pinpoint exactly what's happening and take action to adjust your content to draw more visitors to these less popular pages. Or replace with content that's more compelling.

"What's in it for me?"

Remember the main customer credo for all types of marketing,"What's in it for me". The customer wants to know how YOUR web site will satisfy THEIR wants/needs. If your written content does not compel your customer to take action (i.e. contact your company for a loan); you are just wasting your time on the Net.

Take note of how updates or changes to the site affect visitor activity. More specifically, note if these changes affect only the number of visitors. Or do you see changes relative to increased number of sales leads, applications, etc.? Measure changes in terms of the goals of the site, not just absolute numbers of visitors or hits.

Read between the lines to better understand your visitors. For example, time of day your site is accessed will help identify if visitors are at home or at work. Many home users use a 28.8k or 56k modem speed (over 90% of all Americans have low-speed modem access). If your visits are short, you need to reduce heavy graphics on your web site (remember the "10 seconds to glory rule" that we have discussed in previous articles). Also make sure your web-hosting server responds quickly. Having a slow hosting provider can be costing your company lost customers…everyday. No one is going to wait over 30+ seconds for your web page to load.

Your Target Customer

You may be surprised at how much you can improve your site results by understanding more about your visitor actions at your corporate web site. Develop a profile of your visitors. Understand not only who visits your site, but also why they visit. What pages do they view? Where do they come from? Make changes accordingly in terms of the loan products you offer.

Is this the "target customer" you're after? If not, why not and what changes can be made to get your target customer to visit? Find out how each buyer or lead found your site. You can ask this on your order or lead generation form. But, if they don't tell you, you can check your tracking program for this information.

Test Advertising Sources

Understanding your traffic results from real world advertising (i.e. newspapers, radio, television, etc) is very important. Figure out what publicity or marketing efforts generate the desired activity at your site rather than just what increases hits.

Analyze your traffic to see what places are working best for advertising. Find out which advertisers sent traffic and what traffic became business. In fact, if you're not tracking your advertising results, you're wasting your Internet marketing dollars.

And isn't generating new business the main reason why your company is on the Internet in the first place??

Rod and Robert are co-founders of MortgagePromote.com, a leading Internet marketing provider to corporate mortgage clients. On request, they conduct nationwide training seminars covering Internet marketing strategies, lead generation, web site development techniques and more.